Boys Prep, a Nashville charter school that opened less than two years ago but faced hardships and saw turmoil from the beginning, has elected to shut down at the end of this school year.

The school — which experienced turnover in leadership, a midyear exodus of students last winter and accusations that a past president physically assaulted two students — had been put on notice in the fall because of continued poor performance on academic benchmarks.

On Wednesday, Boys Prep’s board of directors agreed to surrender its charter, a move made in coordination with the district.

“We asked them to do that, and worked with them through it, and we’re going to try to help families make transitions,” said Alan Coverstone, who oversees charters for Metro.

“Broadly speaking, financial and operational issues made it very unlikely that they would complete a successful year next year and very likely that we would have had to move for revocation in the near future anyway.”

Its board’s chairwoman, Michelle Bouton, was unavailable for comment late Wednesday.

The decision — which marks the third charter in Nashville to close — comes after the school district in October notified Boys Prep and two other charters about of their lack of academic progress and the need to produce higher outcomes on standardized tests this school year.

If not enough changes are made by October 2014, Coverstone said, he then would be back in front of the school board to recommend that any or all three of the schools be closed.

The Tennessee Charter School Center applauded the move to shut down, calling it the “right decision.” The organization said it values accountability as an “essential ingredient” to successful publicly financed, privately led charters.

Two other charters in Davidson County — Smithson-Craighead Middle School and Nashville Global Academy — have closed in previous years. The latter relinquished its charter, while the school board voted to revoke Smithson-Craighead’s last year.​